Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

derived from his correct notion that a quick sale was not in order. None of the nine would make for a good travel companion. These dwarves were bitter, angry individuals, degraded into a near-bestial state by the harsh oppression of their slavery.
    “Perhaps one of the other factions might have dwarves as well?” Marcus suggested hopefully as the last of the sneering, scowling gladiators was escorted back to the factional cells.
    “Not a one,” said the training master. He was a tall, powerfully built man with a terrible scar across the left side of his face. “Whites don’t take breeds. Greens do, but they usually go in for orcs and gobbos, and those don’t mix real well with dwarves. Blues had twelve until last week, but they all got killed in the re-creation of the IronMountain siege.”
    “I saw that!” Sextus said. “It was incredible. Especially that catapult they built—for a moment there I thought they were going to turn it on the crowd! Say, why do you shave their beards?”
    “Reminds ’em where they are. Reminds ’em what they are.” The training master looked appraisingly at Marcus and Sextus, possibly wondering what these two wealthy young masters would want with dwarves in the first place. “They forget sometimes, else.”
    “Are these all you’ve got?” Marcus said. He was doing his best to keep the distaste off his face. Not for the dwarves, for whom he only felt pity, but for the training master. “Isn’t there anyone else?”
    The training master shrugged. “There’s two more up in the infirmary. I don’t know what you want with a dwarf, but neither one is up to putting up much of a fight. Unless that’s what you want, of course.”
    Marcus stared at the man in disbelief. Fortunately, Sextus grabbed his arm and squeezed it before he could open his mouth. What did the man think they were, a pair of decadent thrill killers?
    But then, this was Amorr, after all, and not even its public dedication to the Lord God Almighty enabled it to escape man’s fallen nature. For every saint, there were ten sinners, and for every man genuinely devoted to faith, good works, and charity, there were three given over to the worst forms of depravity and sadistic decadence. No doubt this man, laboring as he did in this terrible place, saw the evil side of man far more often than its reverse.
    “Take ’em back,” the training master said to an overmuscled pair of assistants. Then he beckoned toward Marcus and Sextus. “Follow me. I’ll take you to the ones in the infirmary. They’re both good fighters, but one was lamed in the last spectacle, and the other one took a pretty good stick in the ribs.”
    They followed him up the stairs and into what could easily have passed for one of the lower circles of hell.
    The one-room infirmary was dark. It stank of disease and decades of blood dripping from the wounded and dying to soak into the wood of the floor. Marcus was appalled, and he saw even Sextus swallow hard at the olfactory assault on their senses. There were forty beds. A third of them were full, attended by only one slack-jawed attendant who appeared half-witted, at best.
    “We keep them alive if we can,” the training master said, not blind to the reaction of his visitors. “Doesn’t pay to let them die before their time, you know. And it’s not every stable that puts poppy seed in the wine to take the edge off the pain.”
    Marcus resisted the urge to point out that the man was in the business of sending these poor creatures out to die. Still, it was true: there was none of the moaning and thrashing that Marcus would have expected from such a sad collection of maimed and maltreated individuals. Most were unconscious. The two or three who were not seemed to be lost in a dreamy state that left them blessedly unaware of their surroundings. Marcus did his best to avoid looking directly at any of the ghastly injuries, but even so he saw far more than he would have wished.
    The training master